if you need to walk away away from someone in order to protect your happiness, that means you are basing your happiness on another persons actions or emotions

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I feel that when we stop basing our hapiness on other people we can walk away from all of them and still be equally happy. Isolation and walking away from a person you fundamentally disagree with are not the same thing. Physical abuse is pretty easy to define, but emotional abuse is very subjective and none of us owe anyone anything. What we give to others is given freely or with attached expectations. Expectations lead to that feeling of "investment" or "deserving" something from someone else. If our happiness isn't based on them we can let them walk away just as easily as we can do the walking away.